


It's a New Day

by cleodoxa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-09
Updated: 2011-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-14 15:05:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleodoxa/pseuds/cleodoxa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco and Hermione both find that their lives aren't going where they expected them to go.  They meet in the duelling ring, but perhaps they needn't always be in opposition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a New Day

“You don’t want to buy a wizzvision, I suppose,” Draco said, hoping a little just the same.

“We don’t want all that Muggle nonsense,” said Narcissa.

“You listen to the wireless, Mother, where do you think that came from?” asked Draco. He still felt a little daring, suggesting any blending of the wizarding and Muggle worlds.

Narcissa had no answer, but wizzvision really _was_ very Muggle associated. The bright young Dennis Creevey had determined to create something his brother would have loved, and never shut up about his aim to adapt Muggle advances to a wizarding world. Draco had seen television once, in the house of a Muggle friend he’d made going through his phase of trying to make his own way in the Muggle world, when, after the war, the wizarding world emphatically hadn’t wanted him. However, he hadn’t been able to show as much interest as he felt, fearful of blowing his cover.

It took him a while to think of someone whose wizzvision he could watch; he’d never become much more than acquaintances with Astoria’s set while they’d been together and now they’d broken up neither he nor they wanted much to do with each other. He lighted upon Richard Whitless, a bit of an outsider in the close-knit pureblood circle, living disreputably and paying perfunctory attention to his family and their friends. Draco had found himself more interested in someone like that than he would have expected, and cultivated his company. Richard was also unlikely to take sides between him and Astoria.

“So you haven’t got much on at the moment?” Richard asked a couple of weeks later.

Draco had come over to his house almost every day, mostly to watch the wizzvision. It had a charm greater than Muggle television. There were Creevey’s technical innovations – the simple fact it was able to function in places with high magical frequency. The viewer could press buttons to change their screen view to anything in the same room as the camera; this often, especially at first, amusingly caught people off guard but the novelty soon began to wear off. There was a button that worked on the same principle as that eye of Moody’s. Different-coloured lights sometimes glowed about the people on film to show hidden emotions, whether a person was nervous, or moved, or duplicitous. The Ministry had banned them from filming certain kinds of events on the dubious grounds that watching wizzvision and having to deal with things discovered thereby would be far too time-consuming.

The real interest came with the extra intimacy and transparency added to an already small community. If the viewer didn’t _know_ the person on screen, they probably knew their name or face, or their friend or family. The not-real programmes with acting stuff were a novelty because it showed that person pretending to be someone else to your face. Theatre was a very minority interest and this experience was quite a new one. The people in these programmes acted like real people and didn’t do that weird singing thing like they did in plays. A lot of the actors were attractive and began appearing in things like _Witch’s Weekly_.

Draco had decided that he would have liked to have been be an actor, have all those people looking at him, being interested in what he was doing.

There were programmes about real people being real, too. Competitions where people had to answer questions or do spells to win money. People telling you how to make potions, or do beautifying charms, or rid your garden of pests. Broadcast Quidditch matches. There were documentaries, so the wizarding world would learn more about itself, said Creevey and co., trying to brand it as an enterprise in wizarding pride rather than a Muggle invasion. There was a reassuring documentary showing the Aurors – including Harry Potter, of course – efficiently at their brave work. Lots and lots about You-Know-Who stuff, with touching and inspiring tales of personal bravery. There was a film about the Death Eaters and their fates; Draco was relieved to find that his name was barely mentioned. Draco thought it would have been more interesting if they’d had the benefit of footage of any of the people they were talking about, or invited him to talk about his story. He could have blinked away the tears, told them how awful they had all been, assured them that Bellatrix really was like that _all the time_.

“Well, no,” said Draco, his attention shifting to Richard. He’d been trying not to think about it. “I don’t know what I _should_ have on right now. I can’t think of anything that’s _the_ thing to do next.”

“You don’t have to rely on the wizarding world, you know,” Richard said after a pause. “To give you a place and everything. I’m just saying, if it would make you happier to disappear into the Muggle world and never make a big impression here, you should do that. Not that I’m scheming to drive you away or anything.”

Draco was going to answer, but realised he didn’t know what to say. Maybe that _was_ his dilemma. Maybe his nature wanted to relax into the swim of a larger pool and be ordinary in a way he’d never thought he’d be, and against that impulse struggled all his childish idealisation of his grown-up self, and a stubborn reluctance to quit the field. Look at him wishing he was on wizzvision with everyone knowing about him and approving of him. He’d like that, to be broadcast into wizarding homes across the country, making them have a reaction to them. Maybe he should try to actually do it, try unrealistically to get what he really wanted before making more sober decisions. He almost asked Richard what he thought, but thought better of it.

Later, Draco wrote a letter to Dennis Creevey, not knowing who else to address it to. Creevey was in charge of almost all the programmes, present at the filming and everything, leading to rumours of Time-Turners. Once it was in the talons of an owl, he thought that Creevey must surely get scads of letters like that, and there really was nothing convincing about his. It was too nakedly begging, asking Creevey to do something for him rather than saying what he could do for Creevey. Draco managed to persuade himself into a peaceful state without hope.

As luck would have it, Draco would not have had long to hope in any case. Creevey came to see him a day or two later. They began awkwardly; Malfoy Manor’s fires were not widely accessible through the Floo Network and it wasn’t possible to Apparate in beyond the gates. Creevey sent a little paper aeroplane note up to the house and Draco, fearing that anything else would prejudice his case, ran down to the gates himself to let Creevey in. Then there was a bit of a walk to the house, while Draco wondered uneasily if he ought to be getting down to business on the way.

When they finally sat down, Draco asked a house-elf (in a very civilized, nice manner – must show that he'd changed, right?) to fetch Dennis a cup of tea. Creevey’s eyes flickered keenly about the room. Draco expected some over-excited commentary to escape (the Creeveys had been those weird little squeaky brothers, hadn’t they?) but it didn’t.

“I had a lot of thoughts when I got your letter, Malfoy,” Creevey said. “But I’m afraid I wasn’t quite sure what they _were_ , and I thought seeing you would help me explore them and clarify the decision-making process.”

“Right.”

“Well, you have the Mark,” said Creevey, not pulling his punches, and gave Draco a significant look which made his insides go a bit squirmy and ashamed and afraid. “You spent the Battle of Hogwarts milling around hoping not to fight anyone on either side. My brother was killed fighting the Death Eaters. And now you want me to associate with you on a professional basis. I just don’t know how I feel,” Creevey said, turning earnest and waving his hand. “I know I can’t _really_ bear grudges against everyone who wasn’t actively doing the right thing, but where do I draw the line?” He spoke as if his question wasn’t rhetorical.

How do you expect me to know, Draco thought sourly. They’re your delicate feelings.

It seemed that Creevey was indeed waiting for an answer, but continued regardless. “In your heart of hearts, knowing what you know of your heart, what do you think I should do? Are you worth me trying to work with?”

“Well,” he said uncertainly. “It’s a matter of personal preference, isn’t it? You run the show, you don’t have to work with anyone you don’t want to. I’m sorry, if that’s what you want to know.” He was going to add a really honest bit about how a lot of it was more sorry he got caught on the wrong side but he had a feeling the sum of remorse would grow as he got older and more mature, so he caught himself just in time.

Creevey bit his lip thoughtfully. “The thing is, I have a feeling I’d like to put you in the mix. You’d show an interesting side to the zeitgeist. But while I’m thinking, how would I? What would you be on wizzvision _doing_?”

“I don’t have any exact ideas. It seemed a bit sad to plan it all out in daydreams. But I don’t think I could act.”

“Oh no,” said Dennis to the latter. “We need narrative progression; it’s all about the journey. I do like to show, not exactly my agenda, but my – my values. So as a former Death Eater, ideally you’d be showing why being a Death Eater is a _bad_ thing, or, more actively, doing something that’s _not_ being a Death Eater and showing it being good because it’s doesn’t adhere to a corrupt and evil ideology. But not cuddling Muggle babies or the like, we’d be more subtle. And if nothing else you could always be a cautionary example. So. Where are you going to _go_?”

Draco, recoiling somewhat from Creevey’s musings, thought about it and suddenly wasn’t at all sure he wanted to be exposed for judgement.

“I suppose getting a job would be a start,” he said.

“What did you used to want to be when you grew up, apart from a Death Eater?” asked Creevey.

“A very important wizard in the Ministry like Father,” Draco said promptly. “But I don’t think—”

“—That’s going to fly, no. We could put you into a variety of jobs it might be fun to see you doing, the kind of colourful thing children are supposed to want to do. And then we could end with you finding your niche after making a personal journey. It all depends on how interesting you are.”

Draco thought that him being interesting and people being interested in him being interesting were two different things and might not coincide. Misgivings aside, he was beginning to feel a little wistful at the idea of someone coming in and organising his life. He wondered what sort of career children _did_ want.

“Those professional duellists,” he said. Not that he knew anything of children’s aspirations in that direction, but he’d been intrigued themselves since they had become something of a fashion since the war, when everyone had been all keyed up about valour and skill and winning and losing. “I could try that.”

“ _Yes_ ,” said Creevey after a moment. “You could. We’ll have a go at making something of you then.” And he clapped his hands while Draco smiled nervously.

*

Draco had to tell his parents, not least because Creevey wanted permission to film in Malfoy Manor.

“But I don’t understand what they want you for. Aren’t they going to make a fool of you?” asked Narcissa. She could have been _more_ unencouraging, but tried to couch her disdain in terms of concern, seeing the way the idea, surely a bad one, had cheered Draco up.

“I won’t be taken advantage of,” Draco snapped. “You seem to be forgetting that I will actually be there while they’re filming me. I won’t do anything that makes me look like a fool.”

“Will they be paying you?” asked Lucius. Draco did wonder sometimes whether his father resented paying him an allowance.

“I assume so. I’ll insist so, anyway.”

“You had better make it plain that _I_ will not be appearing," said Lucius with a frown. The shattered pieces of his public image had kept him from Azkaban, but shattered they certainly were. Lucius had soon become paranoid that even brief interactions would incite dislike in others. Draco couldn’t help feeling this attitude represented an inability to tell exactly which parts of his actions and attitudes people found objectionable, let alone why. “They’d claim I was ... unpleasant no matter what they saw me doing or saying.”

*

To begin with, Creevey explained, they would take shots of wide wealthy Malfoy spaces. High golden ceilings, the grand staircase, the long gleaming dining table, and the grounds, where they would catch up with Draco. His job was to be wandering forlornly while the last of the Autumn leaves whizzed past his head and danced around his ankles. Draco set off, wondering whether his shoulders were hunched enough and whether he wanted to look forlorn anyway. He’d asked Creevey, who’d said “Narrative progression, Draco! If you’re just fine now where are you going to end up? The gutter?” Draco wondered if real life had narrative progression. Plenty of people started off just fine and continued at the same level of just fine all their lives. Some people were on the wrong side of just fine and were never lifted into heights or sunk into depths, just carried on with their problems unsolved but not knocking them off-balance. Putting his hands in his pockets (it was a horrible raw cold day) he stared unseeingly at a peacock sulking under a tree.

There were shouts; the cameramen had finished. “Very good, Draco!” said Creevey, jogging up to him. “Lovely thoughtful colours.”

Thankfully Draco was allowed back inside now, to talk about how lost he felt and how he was searching for an identity.

“And how terrible you feel about the mistakes of your youth,” Creevey reminded him. “You should look _very_ sorry about that.”

That wasn’t too difficult; Draco wished he hadn’t been there for the years between sixteen and eighteen. He even _was_ sorry about things he did to other people, not just having to be there himself, but he felt inhibited by thinking what his father’s reaction would be to what he was saying.

“I’m Draco Malfoy,” he said haughtily when he heard the word “identity”.

“Exactly! And now you don’t know what that means.”

He didn’t know who the Malfoys were anymore, it was true, he admitted to himself. He dropped that in after rather distastefully maundering on about being lost.

“Hmm,” said Creevey. “Quite stiff, not quite likeable. I’ll see how it goes. It might be a good starting point. We can always re-shoot it if you don’t provide enough of a contrast.”

This was the easy bit. The duelling part that Draco had committed himself to had to come in at some point, and this was where it started to come in. Draco had not plucked the idea entirely from thin air. When Richard Whitless wasn't peripherally engaged in the social sphere he was born into, he was headlining as a professional duellist, which seemed to Draco to be something quite disreputable and seedy. So he had, not quite sure why, drawn back from asking him about it until the very last moment. Now he had to take the plunge.

He felt a bit embarrassed about breaking the whole wizzvision thing to him – having to ask Richard to interact with him on camera, and admitting that he had acquired this entourage due to his own ego. Richard always seemed laid back, above or at least beyond a lot of Draco’s pettiness and fretful self-seeking emotions.

“I’m going to try to duel like you do,” Draco explained. “Do you think you could teach me?”

“Sure, we’ll see how we get on,” Richard said. The first thing he did was give Draco a list of hexes, jinxes and curses that were banned in a sporting wizards’ duel, and the very, very long list of spells that were not. Draco hadn’t heard of two thirds of them. “Of course, these are just the obvious ones. You’re welcome to dig up or invent others; it’s not difficult to intuit what would be acceptable and what wouldn’t.”

Draco suddenly realised the process of even getting to practice with Richard was going to require more time and dedication than he’d foreseen. He started to familiarise himself with about two hundred spells on the list, and chose a smaller core he felt he could really master. He felt here the annoyance of the camera crew; they didn’t just appear when pre-arranged scenes were to be filmed. Apparently they had to hang about to catch him in the act of being interesting when he was just _getting on with his life_. They caught all manner of difficult moments in his practice, and he made many noises he wished no one to hear. The best way to Draco seemed to be to choose a limb of his own to direct spells at. That way he could tell exactly how well they worked, and would harden himself to receive an onslaught from an opponent. He learned to have counter-spells to hand before doing this. When he needed to look on the bright side of the position he’d got himself into, Draco was gratified to find himself thinking about spell work in a different way. He tried to think which jinxes he’d use if he had this or that thrown at him, think of spell sequences that might alarm his opponent or lull them into a false sense of security, to practice healing himself in between curses so that it came naturally and didn’t thrown his reflexes off. It was like a language; he wasn’t much used to thinking of spells as linked together to produce a result through combination.

Richard came to see how he was getting on. Draco told him how hard he was practicing, and what insights he’d reached. “So when do you want to actually practice with me?” asked Richard.

“Now!” said Creevey, who’d just arrived. “It’s time you moved on. Can you do it in the ballroom? Lots of room for you to circle each other.”

“I _suppose_ now is – yes, now’s okay,” said Draco, stiffening his resolve, trying to make himself feel like a fight, testing his will against another.

Draco was unsure how to act when they got to the ballroom; like he was casually practicing with a friend or like he was having a _fight_ and trying to frighten somebody? He settled for grimly nervous.

The flurry of activity he and Richard launched into after Creevey yelled “Go!” didn’t last long before Draco’s defence crumbled.

“That was amazing! It happened so fast!” said Creevey while Draco, sat on the floor with an uncontrollably cramped leg and a hand that wouldn’t stop oozing blood and ice.

“I couldn’t keep up,” said Draco, feeling very discouraged. He’d expected to be at a disadvantage, but not to be able to put up _so_ little a fight.

“It’s all about stamina. That’s what everyone has to learn,” said Richard.

The following period of time would be much less tedious edited. There was determination and despair, tenacity and (once, in private) a couple of tears. There was trying again and injuries and tantrums here Draco yelled “I GIVE UP! HAPPY NOW? I CAN’T DO IT!” (on camera, regrettably) And the length of the duels slowly grew, as Draco held out just a little longer and longer. And at last, a butterfly of some kind emerged from its chrysalis; a Draco with a new skill.

“I can set up a real fight for you now,” said Richard.

Richard was employed by the Professional Duellists’ Association, which charged the general public for seeing duels. Because of this element, Richard explained, Draco should try to have some kind of presence, produce something people might want to watch for entertainment. Draco had seen Richard fight; his angle was to be very languid, so he looked as though he hardly cared what he was doing and needed no concentration to beat his opponent. “It’s with a witch who’s in the same position as you, she hasn’t fought professionally before and she’s trying to get PDA to employ her. It’s not necessarily an either/or thing so don’t panic if you lose; if you both manage to impress them enough you could both get taken on,” said Richard, having set it up.

Draco was greatly relieved to find he had only another novice to deal with and was determined not to lose. He resolved that he would be icy, his wand strokes tightly controlled, quick and devastating like lightning.

*

Draco felt conspicuous at the PDA centre, what with being an ex-Death Eater and having a film crew, which intrigued and annoyed people who had to remember not to blow their noses in too unflattering a way. And then the noise level rose because there, oh God why, was Harry Potter, and _fucking hell_ there was Hermione Granger staring right at him and she was who he had to fight, wasn’t she? He turned and hissed “It’s Hermione Granger!” into Creevey and Richard’s faces.

“Ooh, is it?” said Creevey, and looked as if he was thinking of waving. “Is that a problem?” he asked, becoming stern.

Draco didn’t know and he wrenched the air about in his hands instead of answering.

“It’s just because she makes it seem more real. Pretend she is just a machine pretending to be real, that helps me sometimes,” said Richard. Draco wondered if this accounted for Richard’s way of moving through life as if in a dream, and thought it seemed a little more sinister if so. The advice wasn’t so difficult to take, actually, as Harry Potter and his two best friends had become hazy archetypes to him since they had been Wanted, if not earlier.

So there Draco was, in the ring, Granger eyeing him with the same look of wanting to crawl back to bed away from the unbelievable horror of this demand that he felt. The umpire indicated that they should begin, and they bowed to each other. The next thing Draco knew he was, he suspected, a ferret. He quickly unferreted and in the heat of the moment, did an almost involuntary, weird spell on Hermione. Little sharp tusks of ivory protruded from her body and began winding as they grew. Suddenly they accelerated like the briars around the Sleeping Beauty as if Granger was doing it herself now; her scowling face was visible in their midst. The tusks filled the ring and began to jab at him. Leaning against the rope, he snapped the tusks into pieces and removed Granger’s shoes. Granger stumbled on one of the chunks of tusk rolling about like marbles and cut her foot.

She sent him somersaulting round and round in the air; he kept raising his wand but was unable to aim it at her. Feeling seasick, he conjured a plate of glass just in front of her so that she bumped into it and was distracted enough to let him go. As soon as his feet hit the ground she turned his ears into roses that weren’t attached to his head. While he snatched them to the sides of his face and retransfigured them Granger hit Draco with a bolt of electricity. Draco fell down and from the floor trapped her in a block of ice. Hermione nonverbally summoned a ring of flames; Draco had to perform a flame-freezing charm as Hermione’s ice melted.

The duel ended suddenly not much later when a conjured bird suddenly ripped Draco’s wand out of his hand.

Draco didn’t feel any thud of disappointment; he was breathing heavily, a laugh under his breath. He wished his mother was there just because, well, he was in extremity. He kept saying _I did it_ inside himself though he wasn’t sure he’d done anything impressive. He got himself over to Richard and Dennis, looking over his shoulder at Granger, who wasn’t very visible past Potter and Weasley’s congratulatory hugs, and felt a little jealous.

“That wasn’t too bad,” said Richard, conscientiously patting his shoulder a moment later. “You didn’t freeze up. You were about equal right up to the end.”

“You had a real fire! You and Hermione both looked like you were having a tantrum at each other, like you cared about the fight rather than the technique. Not self-conscious. Brilliant!” said Creevey.

“But I lost, didn’t I?” asked Draco, just waking up to the fact.

“But you fought!” said Creevey, as if he’d been expecting him to turn tail as soon as Granger raised her wand. Which reminded him what he’d wanted out of all this – he was going to be tough and grown-up and capable. And he’d stood up in front of a crowd and let himself be filmed being attacked; he’d done it to himself and he’d gone through with it. He _had_ been tough, he told himself.

Later Draco found himself with Granger in front of the Manager of PDA. He wasn’t especially effusive; apparently they’d been tolerable but might not have got anywhere if not for the interesting angle of who they were, their history. It was all so low-key Draco didn’t understand it was good until he was being given a contract he made only a hurried show of reading. He and Granger were _both_ being taken on for a trial period. Draco’s knees turned to water at the thought of what he’d got himself into but he decided to simply not think about it.

*

“How—?” began Harry and Ron when they spotted her.

“Well, they’ve taken me on,” said Hermione. “But only because it’ll be good for business even if I make a horrible fool of myself, and Malfoy’s there as well. He said my style had potential but I was obviously very inexperienced and unsure, so I probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

Harry and Ron patted her on the back, Ron a little too hard in his we’re-just-friends-now-I-can-do-that way that was only just obvious, and told her she’d been amazing and not to start nitpicking. Hermione laughed and tried to hold back all the things she was kicking herself for.

“And Malfoy! Malfoy!” Ron exclaimed. Hermione was almost glad he had so bizarrely turned up (with a camera crew!). It showed _something_ that someone had ended up on the same path as her. Also, he gave everybody else another person to look at turning up in a surprising face and being probably not very good, therefore taking that attention away from her. But then again perhaps his presence would draw more attention to hers, especially as they already hailed from opposite sides and all that.

*

Hermione just didn’t know where her life was going. After the war she’d got carried away by all the Ministry talk of rebuilding their society and decided she wanted to join them, work with the bones of any society, the laws, and change the wizarding world. Then one thing led to another and she was not only fired for inciting rebellion, but _sent to Azkaban for six months_. To sustain her she had the impression that she was a not-so-dreadful warning, that things would have been worse if she’d been anyone else, and no one took her offense very seriously. The people she encountered during the whole procedure were indulgent in an eye-rolling way. Hermione could have borne all that with good grace, even if she did cringe horribly every time she realised afresh that she’d broken the rules and the Ministry of Magic was angry with her and she’d be lucky if they didn’t shut her out of the wizarding world for good. But she wasn’t actually good at being a freedom fighter. So what should she do? Try harder and see if she could make it go more wrong? Scuttle back with her blotted copybook to conventional jobs and leave the big things to others?

House-elves, werewolves, goblins and other magical non-human species had a teeny bit more in the way of legal rights now, but they still had no respect in the wider wizarding society, and wizarding society was still the only one wizards acknowledged. There was certainly no _one_ society for all, as she’d thought desirable. And that meant she had no stock with anyone she wanted to help. They just didn’t want her, her help, nothing. She was outside their world as much as they were outside the wizards’ world. They didn’t think she had any power and wouldn’t have wanted to utilise it anyway.

She had managed to establish uneasily polite terms with a young female werewolf duellist, Rebecca Bildene, and persuaded her to give her lessons in duelling. Hermione also practiced like mad with Harry, who found the idea in general intriguing, and Ron, who was charmed by the idea of Hermione, professional duellist, in particular. It was her nerve she had to work on most; usually anxiety spurred her to purify faults and excel, while with more physical disciplines it damaged her reflexes and encouraged poor decisions. She tried to imagine herself enraged like a dragon, perhaps a dragon in Gringotts, who cared for nothing but venting its rage as thoroughly as it could. The growls and squeals this tactic elicited in practice were unfortunate, but never mind.

At least she hadn’t embarrassed Rebecca, Hermione thought, realising that whether or not she’d been brilliant, she’d _won the fight_. Relief released into her blood. It was lovely to have a taste of being good at something again.

*

Hermione was brought down to Earth when she had to go to the PDA centre to practice. The Association wanted its duellists to be _good_ , wanted them to fight each other for practice as well as performance so they would be forced to come up with new ways of getting past their opponents’ guard, expand their box of tricks. She had an exhausting day in one of the Association’s specially fortified practice rooms, working with those duellists willing to take on someone so inexperienced, mostly out of kindness. Hermione had to hold onto clever moments of victory to bolster her spirits rather than expect an outright win, except then she honestly did win one duel. She was getting better at something difficult, something that had only tougher ground to offer the further she advanced. She liked that feeling.

Hermione wandered off to get a cauldron cake and see how others were getting on. She stopped to watch Draco Malfoy being encouraged to perform again and again the charm that sent the opponent whizzing dizzily around, setting them down with their back to you, by John Chillingworth, the half-selkie wizard, and Olivia Matthews, a Muggleborn witch whose parents hadn’t allowed her to go to Hogwarts and had entered the wizarding world by the back door later. Hermione looked at the camera crew, knowing her dubious face in the doorway would be picked up and thought that Draco making awkwardly casual, businesslike conversation with John and Olivia was worth coming about and being captured, in a way. It would be interesting if Draco could be really broken down to his component parts and rearranged better. Her mind, still in battle mode, looked at him hard, thought about disarming him with a flourish, pushing him against the wall ... perhaps she shouldn’t be having vaguely sexual thoughts in proximity to wizarding cameras, she wasn’t sure how much they were supposed to pick up. Draco was actually doing quite well, she thought before leaving. Nice, clean control, not like the flurry he’d been in their duel.

*

Ron had dropped by. They had their usual nice conversation with its undertone of a sense of achievement and relief at being able to do so, and now he was sitting looking through the newspapers she’d had delivered but squeamishly refrained from reading.

“Did they make as much of it as I thought they would or am I just being egotistical?” Hermione asked, unable to help herself as Ron kept raising his eyebrows.

“Oh, they’re enjoying themselves, alright. Full of how you’ve turned out dreadfully – I mean, it’s more sneering, not _really_ having a go,” Ron said. “And they can’t decide whether this means Malfoy’s getting better or worse, thought they suspect it feeds his inclination for violence. Mostly they don’t know what he’s playing at. Or you.”

“I think he’s trying to prove he’s ... _become a man_ and is not who he was,” said Hermione. “Or he just likes attention.”

“And they’re speculating on what it’ll mean that you’re both doing it, and fought each other and will again. Whether it’s the battle of light and dark, the rematch, or a really cunning way of hiding an affair.”

Hermione screwed up her face and stared off into the distance. She wanted something, some prize after having _tried_ , just tried in general since leaving school, and getting no praise, no results, nothing.

*

Hermione was aware of playing the same game as Draco, trying to make herself affable and just-like-you with the other duellists. She was conscious of a tendency to come off as patronising, too jerky or fulsome when she was trying to be friendly at the best of times. If she had a proper aim in all this, it was to make herself more approachable to other parts of the magical community, so that fuelled her more than a simple desire to make her surroundings pleasant. Hermione wondered if Draco, too, felt that underlying the just-like-you stuff was unsureness as to what else they might be like.

*

“Would you like to come to dinner this evening, Hermione?” Richard Whitless asked her. Draco turned his head to glare at him which compelled Hermione to say “Oh, that would be lovely” over the top of her instinctual reaction, which was to refuse in favour of an evening’s practice. She was to have her next fight in a week and had reached the hysterical stage of preparation. She almost took back her acceptance, but remembered that social interaction might help to make her a _real_ duellist as well as practicing. Quite a few of the duellists would be there, mixed in carelessly with Richard’s more conventional acquaintance, who would just have to lump it. Coming to herself, Hermione made her excuses and hurried home; it would be nice to do something about her hair.

“Hello,” Hermione said, offering a thin smile. She’d ended up next to Malfoy, naturally. At least he was, for once, unaccompanied by cameras. Hermione smiled more fully, as Draco, turning, recoiled.

“Oh. Hello,” said Draco, and laughed nervously. Hermione peered round at the wizard on her right. She thought he looked like one of Richard’s more aristocratic acquaintances, and he was already peering round at her with a suspicious curiosity she didn’t much like. She turned back to Draco as he cleared his throat. “I suppose I should – I’m just going to say sorry. If we’ve got to talk to each other as polite grown-ups I think we’ve got to clear the slate. So I’m sorry about all the things I did and said to you that I shouldn’t have.”

“Alright,” said Hermione, more because, as he said, they had to talk to each other like polite grown-ups than anything else. “I accept your apology.” They both took a gulp from their wine glasses.

“You two have certainly been providing us with a puzzle,” said the man on Hermione’s right, tired of being ignored. “No more than old Richard here, I suppose, but we feel like we _know_ all the prominent figures from the war, feel like we know what they’re going to do, and you’ve both been a bit of a turn up for the books.”

“Oh, don’t start, Leopold,” said Richard.

“I don’t think anyone estimated anything good for me, so ...” said Draco, shrugging.

“I don’t know, I think we thought your father would slime you all out of it somehow. But, rumour has it, your father has some strange money-making projects in the works and you’ve been all over the place from what _I’ve_ heard. Working with Muggles, a tumultuous relationship with that Greengrass girl, and now making a show of yourself.”

“Everyone is a show these days,” someone said, and started an argument about wizzvision.

“The way he says ‘working with Muggles’ makes me imagine you as a contestant in a beauty pageant,” said Hermione. Draco shrugged uneasily. “So what exactly did you _do_ with Muggles?” she prodded. “We’re making polite conversation, remember.”

“Well. It was to give the wizarding world a rest from me, so when I came back they wouldn’t associate me quite so much with the whole Death Eater thing. It gave me a rest, too. Not so many expectations.”

“You don’t need to sound like you’re explaining it away,” Hermione said irritably. “I’m not going to disapprove, am I? What did you _do_?”

“I wanted a nice safe, dull job in an office, but they all wanted me to know about those computer things. So I had to go and learn about that first.”

“Oh, I thought you were going to say you gave up and went to work in a supermarket or something. God, even I hardly know anything about computers, I feel bad about it sometimes,” said Hermione. “How did you get on with Muggles?”

“It was weird at first,” Draco admitted. “I kept having to tell myself ‘Pretend you don’t care they’re Muggles.’ But then they stopped seeming different from all the people I already knew. It was like a great revelation and really simple and obvious at the same time.” Hermione nodded as if to grudgingly admit he’d passed a test. “And I heard _you_ went to Azkaban?” he said, brightly changing the subject.

Hermione talked a bit about what Azkaban had been like, pointing out without too much rancour that Draco had never set a foot there. Then they both confided that they didn’t know what had got into them to propel them to where they were now. Hermione hadn’t stinted on the wine, which probably helped along a glow of camaraderie. It was good to feel it though; it was like having a little thorn taken out your side to feel someone who’d been horrible was a human being after all who you might even be able to get along with.

Draco talked a bit to Hermione’s sort-of friend Rebecca, and Hermione talked across the table to Dittany, the girl she was to fight against next week. She was blonde, and Hermione rather got the impression the manager had paired them up deliberately hoping for a cat-fight kind of dynamic, which she was determined to dampen. Dittany was kind enough to tell Hermione she didn’t consider the forthcoming duel a foregone conclusion when Hermione demurred, at least. Her hand was on the table, fingers entwined with John Chillingworth’s, who Hermione had only just realised was her boyfriend. She wondered what it would be like to fight someone you were in a relationship with. Hermione saw a warm smile pass between them and felt a sudden pang. She hadn’t been in a relationship as such since Ron. She hadn’t even had sex since before she went to Azkaban. She wanted to feel someone’s body against hers, have someone _touch_ her, not to mention get her off.

Hermione and Draco turned back towards each other at the same time, not quite expecting their eyes to meet. Embarrassed by herself, Hermione quickly looked instead at his hand on the table. He had quite nice hands.

No, he won’t ‘do’, she told herself. You’re hardly sure he’s a passable human being.

“When’s your next fight?” Hermione asked, feeling a little unkind for making him think of it.

And so her mind veered onto another track, but alas, when the guests were departing, hovering in the room of Richard’s that had two Floos to make their farewells and await their turn, the moment reoccurred. She caught and held Draco’s eyes, an orange-gold of firelight reflected in them. Just seconds away was going home by herself, to worry about everything and look things up before going to bed.

The fireplace was free and Draco stepped towards it, looked back, and held out his hand. Hermione was encouraged somehow that he also looked a little frightened by her and the decision. You don’t have to have anything to do with him afterwards, she told herself, and took his hand before anyone else in the room could look round. She closed her eyes and held her breath going through the Floo and had one moment of being intensely aware of his hand clasping hers, warm and rubbing her thumb, perhaps in nervousness.

Hermione was expecting to arrive in Draco’s own home, whether a flat or a house, but instead she was in the entrance hall of Malfoy Manor.

“Shit, sorry, I should have specified my room,” said Draco. Hermione looked around and felt cowed.

This place didn’t want her here; it was aligned with everything opposed to her that she opposed in turn. Not to mention the upsetting association with being tortured. Draco was looking at her face. He held out his hand again, as if asking rather than expecting her to take it. She took it, and they raced up the stairs on tiptoe. By the time Draco indicated the corridor they should turn into for his bedroom Hermione was feeling a weird pleasure in coming back to Malfoy Manor for shag. These were new times.

Draco’s room was much as she might have expected – large, green curtains, old Quidditch posters on the walls.

“There are no cameras in here, I trust?” Hermione asked.

“What? Oh – no. Or at least I don’t think so. Actually, I think I had a nightmare like that in the last few days. You might even have been in it. With Creevey standing by doing a running commentary.”

Hermione looked at him sceptically and started to laugh. “Perhaps we should take that as a cue to rethink before making the stuff of nightmares come true.”

“Oh no. I do want to. Please.” Hermione looked Draco over. He looked quite earnest, not just drunk or gracelessly It’s Too Late To Back Out Now.

“Well, come _on_ , then,” said Hermione, putting her hand on the back of his neck and shrugging as if to indicate how they were standing, not particularly close, talking to each other. She wanted this to be a heedless escape from her worries, not an awkward awareness of how she was adding to them. Draco drew nearer as she pulled him in, and kissed her. They were light and curious first, testing how the other’s mouth felt on their own, half in a sensual way, half as if they might be going to break away and make childish gagging faces. Once the experience had proved satisfactory, the kiss deepened, became hard and breathless. Hermione put her palms on the sides of Draco’s face, feeling the slight trace of stubble over his jaw with her thumbs. That itching sexual desire she’d felt at dinner had returned.

She pushed Draco towards the bed, while he held onto her hips. She rocked them a little into his hands, feeling the individual warm imprints of his fingers through her thin silk garment, before pulling her down so she straddled his lap. Hermione balanced her knees on the edge of the bed, liking the feel of cool sheets contrasting with the heat of his thighs between her own. He kissed the hollow of her throat once, looking now more pleasantly amused by stumbling upon this instance in his life, a half smile lingering on his mouth. With one hand he stroked the back of her lower thigh, her robes having rucked up. Hermione nearly took his hand and placed it between her legs but he moved it to assist the other in running up and down her back in search of the fastenings.

“It comes off over my head,” said Hermione, impatiently, pulling it up as she spoke, watching Draco’s eyes follow its progress as her body was revealed. She threw it irritably on the floor after it caught her hair and mussed it, then smiled a too bright ‘Here I am’ smile. Draco stroked up and down her stomach and she felt warm tingling in her belly, expecting him to move further up or down.

“Take – would you take your bra off?” said Draco in a low voice.

Hermione met his eyes, taking as long as possible. She never liked the first big reveal, which she tried to disguise by contrarily making the most of the gesture. “Are you watching?” she asked. “Ready? Now?” her fingers just releasing the clasp, before the cups of her bra slipped down. Draco nodded. The straps fell down over her arms. She leaned forwards to throw the bra on the floor and Draco cupped one of her breasts lightly in his hand, kissing the nipple of the other, causing them to harden. She put her hand over Draco's encouraging him to make his touch firmer. He drew her nipple into his mouth and held it just gently enough between his teeth, circling it with his tongue. Hermione reached between his legs and found, as she'd hoped, the bulge of an erection.

"Come on," she said. Draco's cheeks were getting pinker, she noticed. She traced the outline of his cock through his underwear once his robes were off, and he pulled them down in a hurry. Hermione circled it with her fingers. She'd forgotten how she liked the plumpness of a cock in her hand, the heat, the soft/hard feel of it. She traced a vein down the shaft to the head and ran her thumb across the crown. Her finger slid easily across the head dampened with a clear drop of pre-come. She swiped her fingers across a few more times and saw another drop well up. She bent her head and licked it off. Draco drew in his breath sharply, but held her chin to prevent her going in again. He put his finger underneath the waistband of her knickers and looked at her questioningly. She nodded and he tugged them down, Hermione lifting her legs to allow him to pull them off.

Hermione thought as he parted her lips that perhaps the first touch was the best. His finger grazing her clitoris managed to be everything she wanted at this moment. The next moment, of course, was different, and as his finger gathered wetness and came back to her clit. It was not enough that his finger was there; it must continue stroking. Draco nudged her onto her back and pulled her knees wider apart. She rested her heels on his back as he slid two fingers inside her and stroked a place that made her wetter, licking and sucking her clit. She could feel her face getting hotter. Draco slid his fingers in and out of her cunt and Hermione couldn’t help forcing Draco’s head down. She could feel the orgasm beginning to build between her legs, each movement of Draco’s moving her closer, and she was reaching the irritable yet most pleasurable stage of wanting only to reach it.

Draco lifted his face. “Do you want me to fuck you or –” he asked.

“Yes. Okay,” said Hermione. She wouldn’t want to fuck him right after coming and she did want to fuck him.

Draco sat up and reached for his wand to cast all the sensible charms. Hermione usually preferred somehow to do them herself, but her wand was on the floor and when he’d finished she straddled him again. They both held his cock at the right angle and Hermione sat down on it slowly. When his cock was fully in it felt so good she had to bite his shoulder. Draco’s hands spanned her buttocks and lifted her up. She began to move with him and recovered her rhythm, hands locked behind Draco’s neck. Their foreheads were just touching and they kissed in between breathing. Hermione felt a thrill when he groaned a beat before she threw her head back and felt that golden moment of pure pleasure relaxing her body. Face to face and sticky, they both breathed a sigh of accomplishment. That was what she came here for.

A few hours later she woke up in the grey light of early morning and was forced to venture out of Draco’s room in search of a loo. She found one without too much difficulty, but hurried on the way back for fear of encountering anyone and slid into the warm bed. Draco turned towards her in his sleep and rested his hand on her back. Everything would be fine, she told herself, and managed to believe it. She could deal with waking up with Draco later, she could deal with her fight in a few days. Things would turn out okay.


End file.
